


Roommate Wanted

by winterfool



Category: Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fluff, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 06:32:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3347096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterfool/pseuds/winterfool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Veronica finds herself without a place to stay three days before she's due to start a new photojournalist job L.A., she answers a roommate wanted ad on Craigslist. It's a risk, but her new roommate, Logan Echolls, might just make it a risk worth taking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nevertothethird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevertothethird/gifts).



Answering a roommate wanted ad on Craiglist had been a risk, Veronica would be the first to admit that. Her dad, Wallace and Mac had all tried to talk her out of it.

"What if he’s a serial killer?" Wallace had demanded.

Veronica had replied, “Just as long as he cleans up. Do you know how hard it is to sponge bloodstains out of carpets?” Wallace had not been impressed.

If she hadn’t been in such desperate need of a place to stay, she probably wouldn’t have chanced it - but when the apartment you had lined up fell through and there were only 72 hours before your new photojournalist job started, it made a girl willing to take a risk.

A month on, she still wasn’t sure whether or not it had been a risk worth taking.

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting from her new roommate, but Logan Echolls was not it. Generally, he was fairly easy to live with - he cleaned up after himself, always offered to include her if he was cooking or, more usually, ordering out, and Veronica couldn’t deny that she didn’t exactly mind occasionally catching him wandering about the apartment without a shirt on. But as a person he had a way of snarking and needling that got under her skin and annoyed her.

Like the smirk he was wearing now as he stood in the doorway, watching her with a kind of incredulous amusement. “Are you _baking_?”

Although she had only known him a month, Veronica was fairly certain that Logan Echolls was the only person in the world who could make her want to hit him just for saying hello.

"You seem surprised." The best way to respond, she decided, was not even to look at him but to carry on rolling out the cookies she was making.

"Well, I didn’t think you were the Betty Crocker type."

Veronica flicked him a glance. “Shows what you know. Cynicism and snickerdoodles are a match made in heaven.”

"Clearly," Logan grinned.

And wasn’t that just the worst part, that he could be completely frustrating and utterly charming at the same time. For the life of her, Veronica couldn’t figure out how he did that. And perhaps that was why he annoyed her so much; most people she had figured out in seconds. Logan managed to keep her guessing, and she wasn’t used to that. It put her off balance.

So she settled for swinging a wooden spoon at his hand as he reached for a blob of cookie dough.

"No touchy." 

"Alright alright. So," he hopped up on to one of the high chairs by the kitchen counter and rested his arms on the work-top. "Any other hidden depths I should know about, roomie?"

Veronica shrugged one shoulder. “Of course. Don’t we all have them?”

"Not me. I’m as shallow as I seem."

"Oh, okay, so that was some other roommate I saw leaving milk on the balcony for a stray cat?"

"Ah. You saw that, huh?" He flashed her a lopsided, sheepish smile, like a kid caught with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar (clichéd as that was, Veronica couldn’t help thinking it was an appropriate metaphor at this particular moment.)

She nodded solemnly as she slid the first tray of snickerdoodles into the oven. “Yes, yes I did.” 

"Okay, you caught me. I like stray animals, and you bake snickerdoodles. Not very good cynics, are we?"

Veronica was surprised to see him lowering his walls of snark and charm. She was even more surprised to find she genuinely liked this side of Logan. There was a softer twinkle to his brown eyes, one that was warm and open, and it made her want to keep talking to him and trading witty one liners. 

"Nope. You and me, we’re marshmallows, Echolls," she said, using one of Wallace’s old nicknames for her. 

"Marshmallows? I don’t know, personally I see myself as more of the chocolate-covered nougat-y type …"

And just like that the smooth charmer was back, the walls so firmly back in place that Veronica had to wonder if she had imagined the glimpse of the boy underneath. She boy she could see herself liking and, well, stupid and reckless as it might be to even think it, more than liking.

"You have a really high opinion of yourself, don’t you?"

Logan just winked at her. “Well, I mean. You’ve met me, right?”

"True. I suppose you have to think highly of yourself, no one else is going to."

"Oh, you’re cruel, Mars." But there was laughter in Logan’s eyes as he jumped down from the chair. "You also have flour on your nose."

Before she could move he had leaned across the counter and gently brushed the offending flour away. His fingers were warm and slightly callused, and the feel of them against her skin sent a pleasant shiver down Veronica’s spine.

"Night, Mars."

As Logan disappeared into his room, Veronica realised he’d used her distraction to swipe some of the remaining cookie dough.

No, she didn’t yet know if this was a risk worth taking. But boy, was it going to be fun finding out.


	2. Chapter 2

Leaning back against the door as it closed, Veronica shut her eyes and let herself feel the frustration boiling away in her stomach, which she had clamped down all the way home from the office.

“What an _asshole_.”

“So I’ve been told. I usually like to know what, specifically, I’ve done, though.”

She jumped, her eyes flying open again, andsaw Logan was looking over his shoulder at her from the couch. One corner of his mouth was quirked upwards in a bemused smile, and from the looks of things he had been copy-editing something before she interrupted.

“Surprisingly, I’m not talking about you this time,” she said, coming over to sink down into the armchair opposite him and kick her shoes off. “But I reserve the right to call you an asshole in future, should you deserve it.”

“Fair enough. So who has gotten under your skin, Mars? Don’t tell me I have competition.”

“My boss, if you want to know.” Veronica’s expression darkened momentarily. “But don’t worry. You still hold the top spot when it comes to annoying me.”

Logan flashed her a grin as he gathered up whatever he had been editing and set it to one side. It was a little disconcerting to realise that even in the midst of wallowing in her bad mood, seeing him smiling at her could make her feel so much better.

 _Woah, there, Veronica,_ she told herself, _Even if you do live with the guy, how well can you know someone after six months?_

Actually, pretty well, when she thought about it. Even discounting the full background check her dad had done when she told him she was going to be moving in with someone advertising for a roomate on Craiglist (in fairness she couldn’t exactly blame him), she had learned a lot about Logan over the last six months. They had started spending more time together after the night he found her baking snickerdoodles, and somewhere between the Clint Eastwood marathons, Logan showing her around LA and her teaching him how to bake his own snickerdoodles so he’d stop stealing hers, they had become friends. Good friends.

And then there had been the night a few weeks ago when she came home to find him lying on the floor in the middle of the living room, a glass of whiskey in one hand as he stared up at the ceiling. In any other circumstances Veronica might have made a wisecrack about him drinking alone, but the bleak, desolate look in his eyes stopped her. Instead she felt a painful twist of sympathy, and after taking off her coat and shoes she poured herself a drink and lay down beside him.

They stayed like that for a while until Veronica, never one for long periods of silence, started talking quietly about her day, how she had just landed her first feature spread and had to photograph some young entrepreneur who had made his first million running an eco-friendly company. She told Logan about how she was planning to stage the shoot and the irritating co-worker who made it clear he thought he should have been given the assignment. She wasn’t sure how long she had been talking for when she paused and Logan spoke in a small, broken voice,

“It’s the anniversary of my mom’s death.”

He started talking then; he told her about how his father had abused him and his mom, about how his sister had ignored it until she could move out and how his mother had retreated into herself, how she had started relying on pills and alcohol more and more until it killed her. How Logan had been left alone with his father, and for a long time was sure he would wind up either dead or in jail. About the pain and anger and hatred that built up inside him for years until he got out and started working through his issues.

Veronica wasn’t sure if it was because he wanted to tell her specifically or because he’d been bottling it up inside that just having someone willing to listen caused it all to start pouring out, but once he started it seemed like he had to keep going until it was all out.

At some point without realising Veronica had reached out and taken his hand, and when he finished their fingers were laced together. Tentatively she told him about her own alcoholic mother and how she had taken off when Veronica was a teenager. About how hurt and betrayed she had felt, the trust issues it had left her with.

By the end of the night they had both been drunk and most of their secrets laid bare. That kind of honesty bonded people.

So maybe it wasn’t so much about pretending she didn’t know him as it was pretending the attraction she still felt was just a fleeting thing. A pretence it was getting harder to maintain the longer she felt it.

 _Get a hold of yourself. Getting involved with your roommate is never going to end well,_ she told herself sternly, pushing her musings aside to focus on the present.

“So what did your boss do?” Logan was asking. “Do you need me to take out a hit on him? I know people. Just so you know.”

“Tempting … but I prefer to use my own guys for assassinations. Quality work is assured that way. I appreciate the offer, though.”

“Seriously.”

She shrugged, running a hand through her hair. “Oh, he’s just being an ass about this latest shoot. He’s basically making me redo everything and didn’t appreciate me pointing out what a gigantic waste of time it is.”

Logan was eyeing with her amusement – amusement and something else just underneath that set something fluttering at the base of her stomach. “And I’m sure you pointed it out in a helpful, completely un-abrasive manner.”

“I don’t think un-abrasive is a word. What kind of editor are you?”

“Mars.”

“It’s not like I went out of my way to antagonise him.”

He laughed, getting to his feet and crossing over to the cabinet in the corner where they kept the alcohol. “Veronica, I would feel genuinely sorry for the guy you actually went out of your way to antagonise. He wouldn’t stand a chance.”

That was probably wasn’t something she should be proud of, but his words made her feel a warm glow of pleasure nonetheless.

When he came back across the room he was holding two glasses and a bottle of wine. “You’re an amazing photographer, and the layout will be ten times better when you’re done, I’m sure. So here. Just have a drink and forget about your asshat boss.”

“Thanks.” She was a little surprised by the sincere compliment, but it was nice to hear him praise her skills. Smiling, she took one of the glasses. As he poured she said in her best Dustin Hoffman impression, “Mr Echolls, are you trying to get me drunk?”

He grinned again, but this time there was a wolfish edge to it that made her pulse speed up. “Absolutely, Miss Mars. I figure a couple of glasses in you and maybe I’ll stand a better chance of seducing you.”

He winked, but before Veronica could figure out if he was joking or serious he had changed the subject, telling her about a photography exhibition a friend had emailed him about and he thought she would be interested in.

Veronica was barely listening, taking a long, slow sip of her wine and willing her heartrate to slow down.

Getting involved with her roommate was definitely a bad idea. But _damn_ , was it a tempting one.


	3. Chapter 3

“It’s a piece of toast.”

“Apparently, it’s ‘a symbolic representation of the metamorphosis forced upon us by our modern, consumer-driven lives. It embodies the way in which the softness and innocence of youth is burned away into crisp hardness by the brutal forces of capitalism’,” Veronica quoted, leaning down to read the plaque describing the photograph.

Logan considered this, head tilted slightly to one side as though looking from a different angle might enlighten him. “No, it’s just a piece of toast.”

“You mean to tell me you _don’t see_ the tortured American psyche in the way the knife’s hovering, waiting to butter it?” Veronica asked, eyes wide with mock disbelief as she straightened back up. Logan snorted.

“I’ve seen more artistic photos of people’s breakfasts on Instagram.”

“And by that you mean you’ve posted more artistic photos of your own breakfast on Instagram?”

“Well it always looks so pretty once I’ve made a smiley face out of my eggs and bacon,” he said with a grin, but instead of waiting for her to deliver a rejoinder he started moving along the rest of the gallery. His smile slipped into a thoughtful expression as he walked, hands in his pockets, eyes travelling over the works on display.

It was an exhibition of up-and-comers in LA, a ‘top ten photographers to watch’. It had certainly attracted a fair amount of attention as there was a decent crowd milling around the gallery, but the works themselves were somewhat hit and miss in Veronica’s opinion. Some were beautiful, lighting, angles and subject all combining to make a picture an artwork; others were demonstrably less than impressive snapshots of breakfast foods.

That, she told herself, was why she found herself paying more attention to Logan as they ambled slowly around the exhibition than to the actual display. A little furrow had appeared between his eyebrows as he leaned in to look more closely at one of the photographs, but the corners of his mouth, creased upwards in a faint smile, said he was still enjoying himself.

They had spent the entire day together, walking around Griffith Park that morning and then getting lunch before heading to the exhibition. It had gone almost too quickly for Veronica, the time flying by as they talked and laughed and shared less traumatic stories from their childhood, and the afternoon was halfway gone before she even realised it. If she hadn’t been so comfortable with Logan, as if she had known him for a lot longer than six months, it would have felt almost … date like.

Throwing another sidelong look at him, she wondered if he felt the same way. Sure he smiled and flirted and implied he was interested, but how much of that was a joke and how much was serious? He kept his cards so close to his chest that, even as much as she had gotten to know him, it was still difficult to tell what was really going on inside his head.

“See, this I get.” His voice interrupted her silent musings. He was gesturing at a shot of Golden Gate Bridge, taken during a storm; most of the scene was dark blues and greys, but golden light was just beginning to pierce the clouds at the edge of the horizon. “I mean, okay, I know jack about the technicalities of it all, but it makes me _feel_ something, you know? Something other than hungry, anyway.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, thinking privately that he would never stop surprising her, and not sure she wanted him to. “It’s like -”

A loud laugh ringing through the gallery cut across her words, but as she turned to shoot an annoyed look at whoever it was her eyes fell on a couple just coming through the door and felt like the bottom had suddenly dropped out of her stomach.

“Oh, _crap_.”

“What? What’s wrong?” Logan had turned towards her with concern.

“Do you remember me telling you about the boyfriend I was going to stay with until I got my own place, but then I found out he was cheating on me and it all went to hell?”

He nodded. “I remember. It was why you ended up answering my ad.”

“Right. Well. That’s him over there. And the girl he was cheating with.”

“Oh. Crap,” he echoed her, following her gaze with his eyes narrowed and appraising. “You okay? Is this the first time you’ve seen him since you broke up?”

“It will be, if he sees me. Which I would rather he didn’t, so I’m going to sneak out before he does.”

Slowly Logan arched one eyebrow. “ _You’re_ going to sneak out? Shouldn’t he be the one avoiding you?”

Feeling embarrassed, Veronica gave an awkward shrug and couldn’t meet his eye. “Yeah, probably. It’s just …”

“Just what?”

She sighed. “I still feel like an idiot, okay? I started working for my dad’s PI firm when I was fourteen. I pretty much grew up watching people cheat on each other. And I always thought it would never happen to me, because I’d know. But I didn’t. It was right in front of me and I missed the signs.”

His expression creased into something tender, that made her heart sort of flop sideways in her chest. “Veronica …”

“It’s okay. Really. My dad and Wallace and Mac gave me the whole speech about how it’s not my fault and he’s jerk. And I confronted him, yelled at him, so I don’t have any unresolved issues on that front. But seeing him reminds me that he managed to fool me, and I hate that he was able to do that. So I’d rather just go home, okay?”

“Okay.”

He didn’t say anything else. As they started walking back through the gallery he moved round to her other side, draping an arm across her shoulders and pulling her against him so his body shielded her from view. Soothed by the closeness of him, Veronica slipped her own arm around his waist. As she did so she realised it really didn’t matter whether her ex-boyfriend was there or not; he was the past, a past she was done with and no longer cared about. She was far more interested in the guy next to her.

“Actually, you know what? Screw him. Let’s just enjoy the rest of the exhibition.”

Logan glanced down, uncertain, but she smiled back up at him and his face cleared. “Okay. Lead the way.”

He didn’t remove his arm, though, as they veered back over towards one of the displays they hadn’t looked at yet, so Veronica left hers where it was as well. She was close enough to smell his cologne, and she could feel the vibration of his voice as they discussed the merits of the various photographs.

After a while, she had almost forgotten they had nearly left at all, until Logan said quietly, “He’s watching us.”

Veronica threw a glance over her shoulder. Sure enough, her ex was shooting furtive looks towards them from where he stood on the other side of the hall.

“He thinks we’re together,” she guessed from the frown on his face.

“We are together.”

“You know what I mean.”

Logan looked thoughtful. “Would it piss him off if we were?”

“Probably,” Veronica shrugged, uncaring. “No doubt he likes the idea of me pining away my days, missing him.”

“So let’s piss him off.”

“What do you —” She started, but was cut off by Logan leaning down and kissing her.

For a brief moment her mind was blank but for the single thought, _Logan Echolls is kissing me right now_. Then her brain caught up with her senses and she felt the softness of Logan’s slightly chapped lips, overlapping hers, moving slowly, invitingly. His hand was on the back of her neck, tangling in her hair, his palm warm against her skin. Gently he nipped her bottom lip, teasing her mouth open. Closing her eyes, Veronica let herself feel nothing but him; she brought her other hand up to his waist and twisted her fingers into his shirt, and forgot everything but the taste and smell of him, and the sound of her own heartbeat echoing fiercely in her ears.

The kiss probably lasted no more than a few seconds, but it felt much longer and Veronica wasn’t ready for it to end when Logan pulled back and said in a low voice, “That should definitely do it.”

He slid his hand back down from her neck to take hers, lacing their fingers together. Then he turned back to the exhibitions as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

Lips still tingling, Veronica followed him along the row of photographs for a while in silence. Her mind was reeling and she was unsure what to do now. Did she follow his lead and not say anything? Or throw out a casual, _Hey so that was possibly the best kiss I’ve ever had and I wouldn’t mind doing it again if you’re up for it?_

The trouble was, now that his mouth was no longer on hers, all the reasons why that was a bad idea came crowding back in. They were roommates; if she said something and he didn’t mean it, it would be incredibly awkward. It might ruin the easy camaraderie they had developed. And if she did say something and he did mean it and it didn’t work out? It would be even worse. But if she didn’t say something and missed the opportunity …

Of all the things she could be called, she had never thought coward was one of them.

Taking a breath, she looked up at him and said quietly, “So, about that kiss …”

The corner of his mouth quirked up in a grin, and he rubbed the back of his neck in a self-conscious manner. 

“Yeah, I know, you can give me hell for it later.” He glanced down, “Can’t blame a man for taking what might be his only chance though, can you?”

Veronica hesitated only a moment. “What if it wasn’t?”

“What?”

“What if it wasn’t your only chance?”

There was a pause, in which Logan’s eyes sought hers – though what, exactly, he was looking for she was uncertain. Without meaning to she found herself holding her breath, until Logan tightened his grip on her hand and gave her a slow smile.

“Then I’d have to make sure to take those, too.”

Veronica smiled back. “Then I’ll have to make sure you get lots of chances.”

**Author's Note:**

> The first part was written for an AU drabble prompt on Tumblr sent to me by nevertothethird. People seemed to like it so I ended up writing a Part 2 and a Part 3, which I thought I'd put together on here.
> 
> I'm leaving it as a WIP for now as I may add more if/when ideas come to me ... we'll see!


End file.
